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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25324273">It deepens like a coastal shelf</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot'>howevernot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gravity Falls</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional neglect, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family Issues, Gen, I don't know how to tag this actually, Physical Abuse, Pre-Canon, Stangst, Unhealthy Relationships, i did not know ma pines had a canon name so i don't call her caryn sorry, shades of emotional incest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:49:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,225</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25324273</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They worked on the boat; they played on the boat. They were too old for pretend but sometimes they did it anyway, pretending to set sail, fight pirates, find treasure, discover lost worlds. Eventually, Ford got sidetracked watching crabs. He found a crab exoskeleton and played with the legs, studying the way the joints articulated. When he turned back to Stan to share his observations, Stan was sitting, sad faced, staring out at the sea. Ford was disturbed to see his brother so melancholy.</p><p>Or, an exploration how Stan slowly loses the faith and love of his family.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Filbrick Pines &amp; Stan Pines, Ford Pines &amp; Stan Pines, Ford Pines &amp; Stan Pines &amp; Caryn Romanoff Pines, Stan Pines &amp; Caryn Romanoff Pines</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>65</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>It deepens like a coastal shelf</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've had this in my drafts for ages. There might be a post-canon sequel to this eventually, where Ford and Stan actually talk about what the fuck was going on in their childhood or even a pre-canon sequel to this after Stan is kicked out.</p><p>Title is a line from Philip Larkin's "This Be The Verse."</p><p>For a more detailed warning please refer to the end notes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“We’re home!” Stan shouted when they pushed through the door. Ford shoved his shoulder.</p><p>“I don’t understand why you have to do that every day,” he said to his brother, “you know that dad hates it.”</p><p>Stan just grinned at him and hurried into the living room to say hello to their mother. She was sitting on the armchair, phone to her ear speaking in that low flirtatious tone she used when she really had a customer on the hook. She smiled at them as they came in and waved them towards the pawn shop. Stan deflated a little. Of the two of them, he was the closest to their mother. It was part of his beloved daily ritual to sit with their mother after school and chat with her until a call carried her away. </p><p>They trotted over to the pawn shop.</p><p>“Hello, Pa.”</p><p>“Hey, Pa.” </p><p>“Boys,” he said sternly.</p><p>“You need any help Pa?” Ford recited. They had to ask. Every day they had to ask. They both knew what would happen if they didn’t.</p><p>“Not today,” Pa said stiffly, distracted by the form he going over.</p><p>Stan hurried out immediately to sit by Ma and wait for her call to be over. Ford followed at a slower pace, settling on the couch and pulling out his homework. Ma liked it when they all sat together in the living room. Her and her siblings had been expected to sit with their parents in the living room until it was time to go to bed or until they permitted the kids to go out and play. Their grandma was an absolute stickler for keeping the whole family in one room, though privately Ford wonders if this is because she shared one bed amongst all her siblings growing up. Ford complained bitterly about this rule to Stan and even their dad, in the hopes that he would let them do anything else, but sit with their mom. He found her phone calls distracting and anyway, Ma got tired of them after only a little while each day. </p><p>Ford made it through a page of history homework, they were learning about the American revolution again, when Ma got off her call. She sighed deeply after hanging up and collapsed back into her chair. She was always like that after getting off a call; the performance made her tired.</p><p>“Ford! Stan! How are my boys today?” she asked after a moment of calm.</p><p>“It was good, Ma!” Stan answered beaming.</p><p>“Fine,” Ford answered already engrossed in his work again. </p><p>“Stan, sweet boy, come sit with me,” Ma said making space for Stan on the armchair.</p><p>Stan was probably too old for this. As a teenager he barely fit in the seat beside her anymore but he preened at the attention. Besides, this had been their routine for years. Stan used to sit on her lap every day after school, telling her highly embellished stories of their daily adventures, but one day when they were ten, Pa told Ma she was too soft on him, too kind. Stan wasn’t allowed to sit in her lap anymore after that. So, they sat like this, squeezed together on the chair. </p><p>The two of them sat and chatted for half an hour. Ford watched as she tucked her arm around Stan and kissed the side of his head. He tried not to feel jealous. When they were still very young, they would both sit on their mother’s lap and tell her stories together but at some point, it became clear to Ford that his mother really wasn’t listening to him. She only had eyes for Stan. He didn’t participate one day, said he had too much homework, which wasn’t true, but he had been hoping Stan and Ma would ask him to stay. They hadn’t. They just chatted and cuddled like he had never been there. He didn’t want anything to do with it after that day. Even being in the same room while the two of them were cuddled up made his skin crawl. </p><p>But he couldn’t leave either. Ma would tell Pa that he’d run off, that he wasn’t being a good son. He had found he’d do almost anything to be called a good son. </p><p>He stayed, did his homework, and did his best to ignore Stan and Ma’s chattering.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~~</p>
</div>After dinner, after Ford had finished his homework, they went to the beach. When he and Stan were on the shore, they forget their arguments and petty disagreements. Ford didn’t worry about homework or the pawn shop or his parents. The tension between siblings melted away as they examined crabs together or chatted with school friends or wandered along the pier. He loved coming home sun-warm and sleepy at the end of the day.<p>Then in the evenings he would curl up with a book until he fell asleep. This night he’s settled in bed pleasantly exhausted, making slow work of Moby Dick. </p><p>It was in this sleepy quiet that Stan wandered away from their room. This too Ford was familiar with. He knew if he walked down the hall, he’d see Stan sitting on Ma’s bed, listening to her reading out loud, or leaning close as she whispered too soft for Ford to hear. </p><p>Ford finished reading the chapter about the preacher telling the story of Jonah then rolled over and turned out the light before Stan even came back.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~~</p>
</div>Ma Pines loved her boys. Ford was the smart and dutiful one, this is what she told Stan. Always so quiet and good. But Stan was full of life, she said. He was good and interesting. Stan took immense pleasure in these times when she would complement him. He had given up on Pa ever caring so he clung to his mother’s approval. He was aware, sometimes, of Ford watching the two of them together with a critical eye. Ma loved Ford too. Stan knew it. Ma told him all the time. Ma told him everything.<p>She told him about the weird callers she gets sometimes. The strange questions men asked her, or sometimes men called her just to make noises on the line. She wouldn’t say what’s happening but Stan knew enough about boys to know the kind of harassment she faced. She wouldn’t even speak of it to their father. She’d gotten so upset at a caller once that Pa had taken the phone from her and when he realized what was happening he’d promptly hung up and started a fight with Ma. They’d fought for days, screaming and in Ma’s case crying, and once he and Ford had come home from school to find Ma’s favorite robes ripped up on the floor and Ma nursing a black eye. But he’d let her keep working for the call line in the end, though under the promise to always tell Pa when someone was harassing her. She never told him, but she always told Stan. </p><p>And sometimes she told him how she hooked her customers, told them what they want to hear. She could recognize every shift in tone and knew how to use every clue they give her to keep them on line, paying more money. He loved those lessons. Sometimes she would have him sit beside her, ear to the phone, listening in as she sweet-talked the person on the other end, until she delivered just what they wanted to hear. </p><p>He tucked away all the information she gave him for later use. Sometimes, he tried to use these techniques on his classmates or his teachers, to make them like him better, but he didn’t have anything he could give them in return, the way Ma could make a person happy with a fortune. Besides, all the teachers loved Ford more, smart handsome well-behaved Ford. Stan wasn’t good like Ford, had a hard time keeping up with class readings, found that numbers could bring him to tears, couldn’t remember dates or events to save his life, and found himself doodling in the margins of his books more than he was absorbing anything the teachers said. And their classmates didn’t much like him either. He was too loud, too foreign, even with the Pines last name, too something for them to really like him. At least Ford could make friends by being a nerd, even if his hands made him shy.</p><p>Stan loved Ma. Where their father was absent and cold, where Ford was frustrated and closed off, where teachers and peers were cruel or indifferent, she was always ready to hug and kiss and a story to tell, or a book to read, when her work would allow.</p><p>So, he was sure to give back. He spent time with her. Sat with her after school and before bed, helped her in the kitchen when he could. He was the only person in his family who could cook besides his Ma anyway.</p><p>But sometimes he wished she would let him go.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~~</p>
</div>On a Friday, the two of them rushed home. Ford had been anxious and excited to go to the beach all day. He and Stan collected some tools for the boat and they’d both been reading up on ship building. Ford, who could usually sit calmly through class and pay attention, had been almost as antsy as Stan all day.<p>They fell over each other into the house and rushed to say hi to Ma, then politely and calmly as they could ask if Pa needed help. Pa didn’t like them to help much in the last few weeks of school. He said they were too distractible. Ford told Stan that Pa thinks they’re a menace. And it was true. They broke more stuff in the shop in the weeks before school let out than they did any other time of year. As expected, Pa brushed them off. </p><p>They ran out to the living room whooping and Ford raced up to the bedroom to gather supplies. It didn’t take him long. He only needed to grab a handful of tools and a book. Stan, he knew, would grab the wood on the way out. He walked downstairs carefully. The stairs in their house were steep and narrow and he knew better than to tempt fate by running down them. He was about to shout for Stan when he heard their mother speak in the other room.</p><p>“Oh, sweetheart, don’t you think you could stay today?” she asked.</p><p>“Ma,” Stan whined drawing out the sound. </p><p>“I finished my last call early just so I could talk to you today,” she told him sweetly.</p><p>Ford felt his heart sink. Ma never cut out of a call early. Pa would have been furious if he found out and it was one of Ma’s only rules about her business. She kept the person on the line as long as possible to get all the money out of them she could. Ford knew that Stan would feel the draw to stay. Ford swallowed down disappointment and waited to hear what Stan had to say.</p><p>“C’on, baby. The beach will be there every day.” That wasn’t really true: when school let out, he and Ford would have to spend a lot of time working in the shop. </p><p>“I don’t get a lot of free time and you know how I like spending time with you,” she really sounded upset and Ford would have felt more sympathy for her, but she never asked him to stay. She never begged him to spend time with her.</p><p>Ford decided he’d heard enough. He burst into the room holding the bag of supplies up in the air. </p><p>“Let’s go!” he crowed with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.</p><p>“Uh,” Stan started, glancing towards their mother. Ford persisted.</p><p>“Aw, come on, Lee. Let’s go!” Ma could have him later. For a moment the whole room was frozen. Her phone started to ring and that jolted Stan into action.</p><p>“Sorry, Ma. I promise, tomorrow.” He said and kissed her on the cheek before grinning at Ford.</p><p>They hurried off to the beach together.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~~</p>
</div>Stan was listless for the rest of the day. He was fine for a while, sure. They worked on the boat; they played on the boat. They were too old for pretend but sometimes they did it anyway, pretending to set sail, fight pirates, find treasure, discover lost worlds. Eventually, Ford got sidetracked watching crabs. He found a crab exoskeleton and played with the legs, studying the way the joints articulated. When he turned back to Stan to share his observations, Stan was sitting, sad faced, staring out at the sea. Ford was disturbed to see his brother so melancholy.<p>“What’s wrong Lee?” he asked, still kneeling in the sand, crab shell in hand.</p><p>“Huh? What? Uh- nothing.” Stan blinked over at him, looking a little dazed.</p><p>Ford observed him for a long moment. He was wrong, Stan didn’t look sad, he just looked blank. Ford frowned.</p><p>“You sure? You’re not sick or something?” Ford asked seriously. He reached over and touched Stan’s forehead.</p><p>Stan swatted him away.</p><p>“Knock it off Sixer, I’m fine.”</p><p>“C’on Lee. What’s going on?” Ford coaxed. </p><p>Stan sighed.</p><p>“I just feel bad about Ma,” He said after a beat of silence. His eyes were on the sandpipers, running out of the waves, only to race back in.</p><p>“She’s fine, Stan,” Ford dismissed. He couldn’t believe this was what Stan was moping about.</p><p>“I dunno,” Stan said, eyes now on the horizon.</p><p>Ford was silent for a second. Ma had an amazing ability to manipulate. He’d seen her talk dozens of customers out of all the money in their pockets. She could sooth, manipulate, and rile like no one else Ford knew. He’d never really thought of the way she could use this manipulation on her own family. After all, Ford barely knew her anymore. They were people who live in the same space. She was always happy to tell him how smart he was. She would tell the ladies on the block how well he was doing in class. But they didn’t talk. She didn’t hold his hand or stoke his hair or fuss over his bruises like she did with Stan. She didn’t ask about his assignments or his day or his feelings. They just passed each other by.</p><p>“Look, we’ll stay home tomorrow, you can spend as much time with her as you want,” Ford offered, trying to keep the bitterness out of tone. </p><p>Stan looked a little stricken.</p><p>“She’ll be so mad. Ford, you know this is a one-time thing. She’s gonna spend all day on that phone and she’ll probably ignore me at dinner and everything,” Stan said in a rush. </p><p>“Seriously Stan? She’s not gonna do that,” Ford said, incredulous. Ma was so sweet to Stan.</p><p>Stan’s expression twisted in a strange way that suggested tears, though he didn’t cry.</p><p>“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Always the smart one, Poindexter,” Stan said, punching him in the shoulder. Ford put the conversation out of his mind in favor of shoving Stan and laughing when he wobbled and kicked up sand.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~~</p>
</div>Ford watched their mother and Stan for the next few days. He was surprised to find that Stan was right. Their mother was dismissive. She didn’t call Stan in to talk to her before bed, she didn’t talk to him after class. Stan was quiet and withdrawn. Stan’s silence was the strangest thing he’d ever seen.<p>On the third day of the cold shoulder, Ma called Ford into the kitchen to help with dinner. It was an unusual honor. He was so rarely allowed into her domain. Their father didn’t like when he helped her. Ford should have been busy with important things, like homework and helping in the pawn shop. He didn’t need to do useless things like cooking. </p><p>But Ford enjoyed it. He wasn’t very good. He didn’t have much practice but he liked to learn. He was envious of Stan’s privilege. Ma would pull out all sorts of recipes written in Lithuanian that her mother brought with her to America and teach him how to make them. She hoped to make Stan so good at it that he wouldn’t even need the recipes. She would tell Stan's stories about the food they were making and about her mother and her mother’s homeland, peppering in words and phrases of Lithuanian, which their father didn’t permit her to speak around the house. </p><p>But, because Stan and Ma were on the outs, Ford got to spend the rare hour in the kitchen with her.</p><p>“Did grandma ever show you her wedding photos?” Ma asked him as she pulled out ingredients.</p><p>“Nope,” Ford answered focusing hard on chopping vegetables. </p><p>“Probably for the best,” she said lightly, “She burnt quite a few of them.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Ford, your grandfather was not a kind man.”</p><p>“Oh,” he felt ashamed somehow, and he couldn’t look at Ma anymore. She so rarely talked about her childhood, though he suspected Stan knew a lot about it.</p><p>“Don’t go around asking her any questions, ok? She deserves her peace.” </p><p>“Uh-huh,” Ford confirmed as he chopped with renewed vigor. </p><p>“Oh, Stanford,” she held his face and looked into his eyes. He had to carefully put the knife down, surprised by her sudden attention.</p><p>“You’re such a sweet good boy,” she told him and he felt a wash of relief at her words. </p><p>She hugged him and he smelled her perfume and the smells of the kitchen in her clothes. She was warm from standing over the stove and he felt a tension he hadn’t realize he was holding leave him. She was his mother and she loved him.</p><p>“I love you, Ma,” he spoke into her skin. </p><p>She pulled away and smiled at him, ruffling him hair. Then she turned back to the stove and started to regale him with a story from her childhood, how her mother insisted all the children have piano lessons, except for her. He listened carefully.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~~</p>
</div>Pa, Ford thought, was too hard on Stan. Sure, he was clumsy and forgetful and had a hard time paying attention but Ford was pretty sure he wasn’t trying to be any of those things. He couldn’t be trying to be bad, right?<p>That summer Pa got a Chinese vase, Ford had no idea where it came from, but it was expensive. Pa was proud. It came with historical documentation and everything. They could all see the twinkle in his eyes when looking at that vase. </p><p>That was until one day Stan knocked it over. Pa was quizzing Ford on the different firearms in the store, their price and how to properly evaluate them. Stan was sweeping. Ford didn’t see how it happened but Stan must not have been paying attention to the end of his broom because the vase laid in pieces on their floor. Stan didn’t even look at them, didn’t say anything either, just knelt and started picking up the pieces. Ma flew into the room and immediately knelt beside him to help with the cleanup.</p><p>“Oh, Stan,” she said with a sigh before looking up at Pa, “I told you not to put it there, it was bound to get broken. A perfectly fine sale down the toilet. You always do this.” Ma was red faced and Stan’s face was suspiciously red, his eyes too bright. Ford came out from behind the counter to help but Pa held him back with a hand on his arm. They watched as Stan and Ma cleaned the floor, Stan sliced his finger on a piece and didn’t make a sound just wiped the tears from his cheeks, leaving a smear of blood, and kept picking up the pieces. </p><p>“Ford, go get the trash bin,” Pa commanded.</p><p>He grabbed it and held it out for the two kneeling on the floor. The pieces clanged to the bottom of the bin.</p><p>“Sonya, get the vacuum.” Pa’s voice was hard and there was thinly suppressed rage in his voice which made Ford shiver.</p><p>Stan climbed slowly up from the ground and Pa snarled quietly upon seeing the blood on Stan’s hand. He threw a handkerchief at him. </p><p>“Wrap that up before you stain the carpet,” he ordered and Stan did slowly, looking at the floor.<br/>
When Ma returned with the vacuum, Pa ordered Stan into the house. Ford could hear his father shouting. Ford felt a pang of sympathy that he ruthlessly suppressed. Stan had just broken something of enormous value, he had to face the consequences.</p><p>That night, Stan’s jaw was blackened and he was unrealistically silent. They did not discuss it. Dinner was a silent affair and Ford avoided looking at Stan too long, afraid anything could set their father off.</p><p>That night, as Ford was wandering to the bathroom, he saw Stan sitting on the edge of the bed with their mother. She had a hand on his chest and a hand on his face, the unbruised side. His face was shiny with tears in the low lamplight and she rubbed his shoulder, rubbed his arm, smiled at him. He smiled back tremulously and Ford felt so far outside of their realm he wondered if they were really his family. He swallowed down a rush of loneliness, standing there in the dark hall with his father downstairs working on the books, and his mother and brother here ensconced in a world of their own.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~~</p>
</div>After that, Stan wasn’t allowed in the shop for weeks. Which meant that Ford ended up doing all the chores. He hated it. Because of Stan’s stupid mistake, he had even less summer to enjoy.<p>Meanwhile, Stan stayed out for days. He even avoided their mom. He came home in the evenings, smelling like sea and cigarettes and the few times Ford did get to go out and enjoy his freedom, he heard from his friends that Stan was hanging out with McCallister’s crew. Ford personally thought the whole lot of them were menaces. They were known for running small time scams on the boardwalk, scams only kids could pull off. Ford supposed that Stan was, in his own way, a menace. Perhaps it was meant to be. Ford wasn’t sure if Stan was participating in the scams with the crew but it was bad new either way. Stan came home bruised and bleeding more often than not, sneaking in well after dark.</p><p>The two of them used to stay up late into the night talking in the summer when they were younger. But there was no quiet chattering now. Ford tried his best to ignore Stan, focusing on working in the shop and reading in the evenings. He went to the library as often as Pa would allow to check out books on the sciences. He got out college textbooks, read back issues of scientific journals. He knew he disappointed their mother. She was always been a strangely literary person. She thought he should be reading Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Mandelstam, even Akhmatova. He had failed her in this. But at least he and Stan were united in this failure. Stan was never been much good at reading, never really had the interest, was easily frustrated and too lazy to push through his frustration. </p><p>The difference between them, was that Stan was happy to sit at Ma’s bedside and listen to her read to him. Certainly, she used to read to them both. But now the ritual excluded him. Ford could always tell when she was reading to him from the particular rhythm of her voice, the way it became slow and measured like waves breaking in the night. Witnessing them together like that made his chest go hot with something he didn’t care to examine. </p><p>That summer though, Stan avoided even their mother in the evenings. There was no more reading aloud in the house.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~~</p>
</div>Ford tried his best not to care what Stan was up to during the day until, one night, Stan came back more hurt than usual. He was trying to be quiet, Ford could tell, but he was failing pretty badly. He was breathing loudly, he knocked into their desk and kicked something or other across the floor in his clumsiness.<p>“Moses! Stan, can you be a little quieter?” Ford hissed as Stan was clambering up onto the top bunk.<br/>
“Sorry, Ford,” he mumbled back. It wasn’t until the morning that it occurred to Ford that something might really be wrong. Upon returning from the bathroom first thing in the morning, he found Stan, still in the clothes from the day before, laying on top of his quilt, with his back to Ford. Ford was struck by the wrongness of the sight and reached out to shake his brother awake, to chastise him for sleeping in his clothes like a fool. Stan woke with a groan and when he rolled over Ford saw one of his eyes was swollen shut. There was blood on his shirt. Ford only then noted the sand still stuck on Stan’s clothes. There was a hole on one pant leg, stained dark with blood.</p><p>“What happened?” he blurted out.</p><p>“Got in a fight,” is all Stan had to say.</p><p>“With who? Our whole school?” Ford snapped back. He was worried about Stan but there was an unrelated anxiety prickling in his stomach. Stan’s clothes had been ruined, that wouldn’t be pleasant to explain to their father, who didn’t exactly like having to buy new clothes when they weren’t careful enough to keep the articles undamaged. And injuries this bad demanded an explanation. Pa would want to know what happened and he likely would not approve of how Stan got his injuries. Ford felt strangely frantic as he looked at his groggy brother.</p><p>“Come on, come on.” Ford grabbed some new clothes and shoved his brother towards the bathroom, locking them both inside. </p><p>“Let me look at you.” He tilted Stan’s head up in the terrible bathroom light to look closer at the bruises. There was a cut on his forehead which Ford guessed was the source of all the blood on his shirt. His eye looked both better and worse under proper lighting. The bruising wasn’t as big as it first looked, centered around his eye and forehead, with some lighter bruising around his jaw. On the other hand, the colors looked that much worse in the bathroom light. Ford got out some alcohol to dab on the wound on Stan’s forehead. It was already stabbed over but he figured it couldn’t hurt to be careful.</p><p>“Ok, listen. Give me your clothes. I’ll hide them so dad doesn’t get too mad. Take a shower, get cleaned up. I’ll try to think of something to tell dad,” he said once he’s satisfied the cut on Stan’s forehead was as clean as it was going to get.</p><p>“Don’t tell him anything. I can deal with it,” Stan countered. He sounded exhausted.</p><p>“Fine, whatever. I’m still hiding your clothes.”</p><p>Stan just nodded and started to strip out of yesterday’s clothes.</p><p>Under the shirt were more bruises. There was a mottled patch over his ribs and the distinct shape of a shoe on his back. Ford winced in sympathy, thinking of all the ways injuries like that could go wrong. Broken rib, perforated lung, collapsed lung, damaged kidneys, internal bleeding. He had gotten a book an anatomy out recently and it had been more informative than he’d needed. </p><p>Stan handed over his ripped pants and Ford turned on his heel out of the bathroom, already planning where to hide the soiled clothes. </p><p>He tried not to worry over whatever lie Stan was cooking up to tell their father.</p><p>As it turned out, Stan decided to tell a relatively simple story, rather than his usual over the top lies. His explanation for his injuries over breakfast was sparse. He was hanging out with some boys from his class, one of them named Joe, Stan had said something about Joe’s family and Joe hadn’t taken kindly to the insult. Ford wasn’t sure he believed a single word but their father seemed satisfied. Instead of being angry, he told Stan that the beating was punishment enough and he should learn a lesson about being more careful and more respectful. As if Stan was being disrespectful by knocking over that vase. For all Ford knew, that could have been possible. </p><p>Their mother was distraught. She didn’t show it in front of their father but as soon as he left, she pulled a chair up beside Stan and examined his face carefully, making sympathetic noises as he winced. Stan tried to pull away from her as she offered comfort, though he did accept a bag of frozen peas for his face. Eventually, he snapped at her to leave him alone and both she and Ford flinched back, surprised by the ferocity of his tone. </p><p>“Sweetheart, what’s wrong? Who did this to you?” she asked in that hurt croon that Stan usually responded so completely to. She reached out to take his hand. He snapped it away from her.</p><p>“Ma, I’m hurt, I’m tired. I just want to go back to bed ok. I’m just tired ok?” he started out angry but his voice gentled as he spoke.</p><p>Their mother still looked hurt but she followed him up to their room anyway and Ford wondered if he should go out and get beaten up just so she could fawn over him too. </p><p>Stan recovered, but the strange tension remained between Ma and Stan. She fretted over him daily, concerned with his healing bruises, but Stan was evasive, often refusing her comfort.</p><p>On the other hand, things with Pa began to smooth out, if only slightly. Stan was allowed to work in the shop again sometimes and Ford finally got a little free time to hang out with his own friends. </p><p>Once Stan was fully healed, things began to truly deteriorate in the Pines household. Ma started to scorn Stan even when he tried to be close to her. Now he was no longer sneaking around or sulking in the wake of his beating, he tried to talk to her. He invited himself to speak to her in the evening after dinner, before her next calls but she refused him again and again. Before bed she would still talk to him in the low light of her bedside lamp, but only occasionally. Ford wouldn’t have even really noticed if she hadn’t also started inviting Ford to sit with her in the evenings. At dinner she started to ask after Ford’s reading, sometimes between calls she would chat with him, instead of Stan. She was showing interest in him. He wasn’t sure he trusted her new interest. He squirmed under the unfamiliar attention. But it never turned deriding or snappish, as he anticipated, just gentle and genuinely interested. There were things that were still reserved for her and Stan. Only they cook together. He still heard her reading Mandelstam and Akhmatova in the evenings sometimes. But those evenings were fewer and further between.</p><p>Their father never found out about the bloody clothes and if their mother noticed that Stan had one fewer pair of pants, she never mentioned it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Filbrick is an abusive dickhead in this, so there are points where Stan and Ma Pines get physically abused by him. Also Ma Pines and Stan are very close, but their relationship does have some pretty strong overtones of emotional incest, which is where a parent leans on their child for emotional support and care that they should be receiving from another adult. There's also an instance where Stan gets beaten up.</p><p>Comments and kudos are my fuel for writing!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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